John 5:1-18 After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.… What St. John affirms is that a certain invisible angel or minister was the instrument of making the water beneficial to the persons who went down into it. He accounts in this way for its operation being more useful at one time than another. That assertion, you say, interferes with the doctrine that there were certain properties in the water itself which affected the condition of human beings. How does it interfere? You hold that the vaccine matter has in itself the property of counteracting the virus of the small-pox. But you hold also that the intelligence of Jenner had something to do with making this vaccine matter available for actual cure; you hold that the intelligence of different medical men has something to do with bringing the preventive power to bear on particular cases. You know this for a fact, but physical science tells you nothing of the way in which the intelligence co-operates with the natural agent. The notion that it does is a fallacy. In no instance whatever can the mere study of physics help you to determine anything respecting moral or intellectual forces, though at every turn the study of physics compels you to the acknowledgment of such forces. It will save us from innumerable confusions if we take this proposition in the length and breadth of it. Through neglect of it the physician and the metaphysician are perpetually stumbling against each other when they might be the greatest helpers of each other. (F. D. Maurice, D. D.)It seems a worthy exercise of Divine revelation to lead human philosophy to regard what are called physical phenomena as being not produced by natural laws, though they may be regulated according to them, but as effected by Divine agency; in a word, to elevate the human mind from the lower level of material mechanics to the higher region of spiritual dynamics. (Bp. Wordsworth.) Parallel Verses KJV: After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.WEB: After these things, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. |
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